


All The Comforts of Flesh

by AnonymousPumpkin



Series: Homestuck Prompt Fills [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Autism Spectrum, Autistic Dirk Strider, Background DirkJake, Character Study, Gen, Human beings are squishy and gross, Robots are smooth and nice, Sawtooth is there for a second, Stimming, The rest of the alpha kids are mentioned but not present, Touch-Averse Dirk, Verbal Stimming, sensory issues, sensory processing disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 18:59:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8256847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousPumpkin/pseuds/AnonymousPumpkin
Summary: Dirk knocks his knuckles against the knobs and nuts and creates a clanking cacophony.

It was a rhyme he’d made up when he was ten while doing just that. He liked the rhythm of it, the comforting hard c’s and k’s, the image it painted in his mind. He said it often to himself, even when he wasn’t actually doing as he intoned. Sometimes he would repeat it for hours, punctuating it with the sounds of metal and wood thumping rhythmically together, or with the sound of his fingers drumming slowly but heavily on an empty can or metal chassis. It was a good phrase, hard and predictable, just the way he liked all things to be. 
In which Dirk has issues adjusting to socially acceptable amounts of human contact.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 49: Hard

_Dirk knocks his knuckles against the knobs and nuts and creates a clanking cacophony._

The first person he ever touched was Meenah Peixes.

He doesn’t find out her name until much later, sometime _after_ the reboot of the universe but sometime _before_ the whole thing got rebuilt from the ground up and a semi-functional community was created. He would have been content, honestly, just dubbing her Ridiculously Blinged Out Awesome Troll Girl, and reminiscing fondly on their far-too-awesome-to-be-contained-by-universal-boundaries high-five. He would always treasure the smart red imprint of her palm against his, which lasted for several hours, and the tingling in his fingertips, and the persistent, creaking ache in his wrist and shoulder that turned into a dull throb over the next few weeks. Yes, Meenah Peixes was the first person he ever touched, and she did leave something of a lasting impression.

However. Given that the contact was brief, and the identity of the person with whom he shared said contact was a mystery for so long, he considered _Roxy_ , to her utter delight, to be his “first.” Not just his first friend, first confidante ( _only_ confidante), or first roleplay partner, or even first person to beat his high score in Ultimate Pong, oh no. Roxy was also his first human touch, his first human kiss. She was even his first human hug. He spent several long minutes ( _very_ long minutes) with her arms around his waist (heavy, fleshing, pulling at his shirt against his skin in a way that made the skin between his shoulders itch), her chin against his shoulder (bony, and so soft, breath against his cheek, with old particles of food touching his skin, his lips), her chest against his back (that was fine—weight fully pressed against him, dragging him down, supporting him, trapping heat against his back). And then, later, his hands on her shoulders, the entire weight of her dead body on his fingertips, the sticky feeling of blood on his knees and elbows, the clammy squish of her dead lips on his.

It was, of course, a momentous occasion for her as well. She’d had cats and carapaces, but no _humans_ until him. When she’d asked about it later, pulling him into a solitary corner, hands shaking and grin so wide she rivaled the Cheshire Cat, he told her that he’d had been far too busy “being universe-crushingly awesome and also saving everyone from pretty much certain permanent death” to really pay any attention to the fact that he was touching a living being that wasn’t a fish or a horse or himself for the first time in his life.

This was, of course, a lie.

The _truth_ was that Dirk was very good at doing tasks he had literally been planning for months and simultaneously having what could only be described as a small emotional breakdown, without so much as lifting a bushy eyebrow. And he did just that.

_Dirk knocks his knuckles against the knobs and nuts and creates a clanking cacophony._

Later, it was more than Roxy. One thing he’d always logically known, but never mentally accepted, was the fact that most personal relationships involved some form of physical contact. In his mind, this was fine. He touched people, sometimes, when he felt like it, and it didn’t feel like slime and grit and filth on his skin. Then he went back to living in his personal bubble, and they went back to standing in theirs, and very rarely did those two bubbles come together in an uncomfortable, three-dimensional Venn Diagram of shattered social graces.

This was not what happened. Roxy touched him at every opportunity, putting her hand on his elbow or his shoulder or his _head_ , initially obliviously to how he tensed when she did so. She was also prone to getting overwhelmed with emotion and essentially tackling him, wrapping him up in her arms and squeezing as if she was trying to crush him. He actually didn’t mind that very much, if only she’d give him some warning before she did it.

Jane was better about respecting his space, but she liked to throw her arm around his shoulder, shirt (or worse, _skin_ ) brushing against the back of his neck, and to kiss his check, lips wet and breath hot. She learned rather quickly, however, to read his discomfort, and in just a few short encounters, she became better than anyone at reading when and where he was alright with contact. Sometimes she knew when even he didn’t.

Jake was simultaneously better and worse than both of them. Worse in that Dirk actively sought more physical contact in the mistaken belief that it led to a better relationship, even though neither of them really _liked_ physical contact, but better in that Jake, like Dirk, really didn’t like physical contact.

After the first day of their session, Dirk had to spend an entire night in his room, curtains drawn and doors closed, curled up underneath a table with his back against a sheet of metal, tapping furiously against a spotless metal can and whispering to himself. He emerged ten hours later with shades and eyebrows precisely in place, and when Roxy launched herself at him full force, he didn’t elbow her in the gut.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t ever touched a living being before. There was Maplehoof, of course, that glorious horse who was his most precious companion, who he was not above stalking for some quality boy-pony cuddle sessions. And of course he’d caught fish, sometimes just to hold them before letting them go. Plus, the gulls around the apartment building had gotten comfortable enough with his presence that they sometimes let him just up and touch them. Of course, those were just animals. That didn’t mean that he was in any way unfamiliar with the _human_ body. He was also far too obsessive not to have memorized his own, making sure he was very intimately familiar with every inch of himself. His own skin was familiar and safe, and while it was not nearly as inflexible as it could be, it had been toughened and darkened by the sun and the sea.

This was different, though. Other people’s skin was different than his own, different from Maplehoof’s, different from the fluttery, rough scales of fish and the soft, tangled feathers of birds. Other people’s skin was dirty and uncomfortable and often he could feel it on him even when it wasn’t, or he felt it on places it wasn’t. It was so _unfamiliar_ and it felt so _dirty_ and it was completely out of his control, and if there were three things Dirk disliked…well.

He watched them when they interacted with each other, and none of them seemed to have this… _repulsion_. Jake was uncomfortable with Roxy’s overflowing affection, but he didn’t jerk or tense like Dirk did.  They all seemed to immediately yearn for each other’s soft, squishy touch, and he didn’t understand. How could they _like_ it so quickly? It was all too unfamiliar for him, and it felt so… _weird_. Their skin rubbing against his, their fingers digging into his muscle like he was something fragile,

He was sure when he got used to it, it would be less…horrible. Surely, it had to be. If he let Roxy hold him for a _really_ long time, it started to feel good. So, logically, if he just let everyone touch him for a _really_ long time, it would start to feel not bad.

Surely.

He just had to give it time.

_Dirk knocks his knuckles against the knobs and nuts and creates a clanking cacophony._

As a kid, Dirk would climb down from the studio apartment to the metal framework below, and would sit with straddling the cool beams. He would squeeze with his legs until they left the indents of bolts and nails on his thighs and knees. He would squeeze with his hands until his fingers gave out and his wrists ached. When it got particularly bad, he would find a good spot to get some leverage, and would press his back so hard against the metal columns that it would creak (ever so softly), but never bend or break.

Flesh, he learned very early on, was pliable and vulnerable and broke easily. There was no resistance, nothing to _push_ against. The only time Roxy ever pulled against him was that first time, when he lifted her dead body to his lips. She was _heavy_ , in a wholly unbalanced way that none of his bots would ever be. Her lips had been still warm (too warm—he was afraid that maybe she hadn’t actually _died_ yet), and hadn’t responded at all to his. He’d hoped to find some comfort in that small detail, but it only made the entire thing that much more stomach-turning. He’d only ever kissed his bots before, and none of them had lips as he knew them, so he just pressed his mouth to flat sheets of metal that pushed back ever so slightly to let him know they felt his affection.

His first kiss with Jake was, of course, wildly different. Not the kiss Jake had shared with his decapitated head…he didn’t actually _feel_ that one, so he didn’t count it. No, their first _real_ kiss. That one was _different_. Different from any kiss he’d had up to then. Different from the one he’d given to Roxy, different from the ones he’d shared with his bots. For one thing, Jake had lips. For another, they were lips that were alive. They were both so eager, Dirk was not wanting for resistance. Jake _pushed_ at him with every inch of him, and it was exhilarating. He was unyielding as any metal body, but in ways Dirk couldn’t have fathomed. He adjusted his weight, his uneven, imperfectly distributed weight, in a manner so delightfully organic. Dirk focused on that instead of the sweat that gathered underneath his palms when they rested against his bare hips.

He’d liked it, he’d loved it, he told himself, but the night after their first kiss, Dirk spent an entire night in his room, curtains drawn and doors closed, curled up underneath a table with his back against a sheet of metal, tapping furiously against a spotless metal can and whispering to himself.

_Dirk knocks his knuckles against the knobs and nuts and creates a clanking cacophony._

It was a rhyme he’d made up when he was ten while doing just that. He liked the rhythm of it, the comforting hard _c_ ’s and _k_ ’s, the image it painted in his mind. He said it often to himself, even when he wasn’t actually doing as he intoned. Sometimes he would repeat it for hours, punctuating it with the sounds of metal and wood thumping rhythmically together, or with the sound of his fingers drumming slowly but heavily on an empty can or metal chassis. It was a good phrase, hard and predictable, just the way he liked all things to be. His fingers soon became tough and bruised from constantly knocking, constantly creating that cacophony.

Here he was again. Under the table. It was becoming more and more common for him to spend his nights here. He was here more often than in his bed or his workshop. His skin still smarted from the heat of his shower and the rough way he’d rubbed himself dry. He’d kissed Jake today, but he’d also kissed Roxy. Two different kinds of kisses, but still kisses. Cheeks were firmer than lips, but shoulder blades were firmer than both.

He pressed his back harder against the cold metal of the wall. The chill seeped into his bones like a heavy weight on the very core of him, and the steel didn’t bend for his weight. The can was unyielding beneath his fingertip, and he knew for a fact that it was clean. He was the only person who ever touched this can, and he always made sure to wash it when it started looking grimy. He had long since tapped away its shine, and there were worn spots here and there, but he wouldn’t ever replace it, he didn’t think. Not unless he really needed to. It was familiar and safe.

His lips felt greasy and hot. He ran his tongue over them. It didn’t help. He lifted the can and pressed it hard against his mouth. That helped. A little bit. He pressed harder on his lips until they began to tingle and pressed against the hard fronts of his teeth. There. That was better. He squeezed his eyes shut and kept the can to his mouth, every now and then pulled back, just a bit, only to press again harder. He only lowered the can when his wrist began to ache. He transferred it to his right and began again.

This was better.

Dirk found no respite in things soft and comfortable. Well. Things soft, comfortable, and _organic_. He loved pillow forts as much as anyone, and when winter came, he was the first person to bundle up into a burrito of blankets and safety. But the idea of actively seeking out _physical_ comfort was…baffling to him. Perhaps it was only because he’d never had it growing up. Sure, he loved to cuddle up against lil ol’ Maplehoof when he found himself with that primal craving for warmth and heartbeats and hooves to the knee, but whenever he cried or felt lonely or felt too happy not to throw his arms around something and squeeze it, he would run to one of the bots. That was, after all, what he’d built them for. To him, there was nothing that was safer or more calming than metal, which didn’t bend or squish, and grew warmer and warmer until it was not too hot or cold, just the right temperature, just the right shape, to cradle him and keep him safe until he slept.

The first bot he’d ever built was a small tin can he’d called Grinch. He’d been twelve at the time, and hadn’t quite perfected the art, but he’d made something that fit his needs. Grinch was wide enough to press his entire body against, heavy enough that he could lean against Dirk and provide just the right amount of pressure without crushing him, and had arms made of flexible enough metal that he could, if the need arose, hug Dirk back. He’d tweaked the pressure sensors so Grinch always squeezed a little bit tighter than was technically safe. He’d only been twelve at the time, and hadn’t mastered the artistry that went into Brobot’s flexible sliding arm plates, but Grinch was certainly one of his better creations in that respect. It had broken his heart when his battery had died after only three years.

An approaching gait, familiar and heavy and predictable, the steps perfectly timed. A heavy _thunk!_ as a metal body fell to one knee.

Dirk opened his eyes. Sawtooth peered at him, squished under a table that was a bit too short for him to have been able to fit underneath it. His head was cocked to the side slightly, his eyes regarding Dirk silently. There was a question there, unspoken.

Dirk lowered the can licked his lips and wiggled his mouth and jaw until he felt confident he could form words without garbling them up. He thought about the day he’d had. Exploring the planet, carefully. Being with Jake, carefully. Kissing Jake, less carefully. He thought about the days before that, when he’d been with Roxy, with her constant hugs and kisses, her comforting constant chatter. His skin crawled with the memory of all the places they’d touched him. He’d showered for hours, just trying to get the feeling off.

Sawtooth tapped one finger against his knee softly, just trying to get his attention. Dirk met his eyes, licked his lips, started again.

“D—” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat, said it clearer this time, “Dirk knocks his knuckles against the knobs and nuts and creates a clanking cacophony.”

They stared at each other a moment longer. Sawtooth inclined his head slightly. He got up, ambled away. Dirk listened to his perfect stride as he left, heavy and timed. He pulled his knees to his chest, curling around the can. He tapped it gently with one finger, whispering to himself. He leaned against the cool metal behind him, and it didn’t give way.

_Dirk knocks his knuckles against the knobs and nuts and creates a clanking cacophony._

**Author's Note:**

> *projects own issues onto fictional characters* Yes. Perfect.
> 
> I started this, like, five months ago. It was the second prompt I ever rolled. It was always intended to be this, but I struggled with how I wanted to say it. This was one of those stories where you slave for months on it, write thousands of words, then realize it's crap and rewrite the entire thing in about six straight hours.
> 
> Losing internet for a day was the best thing that happened to my prompt fills.


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